DONNA ALWARD - The Girl from Honeysuckle Farm / One Dance with the Cowboy - The Girl from Honeysuckle Farm / One Dance with the Cowboy

From the rolling hills of the English countryside to the majesty of the Rocky Mountains…

by Jessica Steele

Jessica Steele’s classic love stories whisk you

into a world of pure romantic excitement!

A perfect English gentleman will sweep you

off your feet in this beautiful country setting

with the scent of honeysuckle in the air…

by Donna Alward

Young Canadian author Donna Alward

brings you an irresistibly rugged cowboy

and a warmly emotional story

that will tug on your heartstrings…

By

By

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

By

MILLS & BOON®

Jessica Steelelives in the county of Worcestershire, with her super husband, Peter, and their gorgeous Stafford-shire bull terrier, Florence. Any spare time is spent enjoying her three main hobbies: reading espionage novels, gardening (she has a great love of flowers), and playing golf. Any time left over is celebrated with her fourth hobby: shopping. Jessica has a sister and two brothers, and they all, with their spouses, often go on golfing holidays together. Having travelled to various places on the globe, researching backgrounds for her stories, there are many countries that she would like to revisit. Her most recent trip abroad was to Portugal, where she stayed in a lovely hotel, close to her all-time favourite golf course. Jessica had no idea of being a writer until one day Peter suggested she write a book. So she did. She has now written over eighty novels.

PHINN tried hard to look on the bright side—but could not find one. There was not so much as a glimmer of a hint of a silver lining to the dark cloud hanging over her.

She stared absently out of the window of her flat above the stables, barely noticing that Geraldine Walton, the new owner of the riding school, while somehow managing to look elegant even in jeans and a tee shirt, was already busy organising the day’s activities.

Phinn had been up early herself, and had already been down to check on her elderly mare Ruby. Phinn swallowed down a hard lump in her throat and came away from the window, recalling the conversation she’d had with Kit Peverill yesterday. Kit was Ruby’s vet, and he had been as kind as he could be. But, however kind he had been, he could not minimise the harshness that had to be faced when he told her that fragile Ruby would not see the year out.

Phinn was quite well aware that Ruby had quite a few health problems, but even so she had been very shaken. It was already the end of April. But, however shaken she had been, her response had been sharp when he had suggested that she might want to consider allowing him to put Ruby down.

‘No!’ she had said straight away, the idea not needing to be considered. Then, as she’d got herself more collected, ‘She’s not in great pain, is she? I mean, I know you give her a painkilling injection occasionally, but…’

‘Her medication is keeping her relatively painfree,’ Kit had informed her. And Phinn had not needed to hear any more. She had thanked him for his visit and had stayed with Ruby for some while, reflecting how Ruby had been her best friend since her father had rescued the mare from being ill treated thirteen years ago, and had brought her home.

But, while they had plenty of space at Honeysuckle Farm in which to keep a horse, there had been no way they could afford to keep one as a pet.

Her mother, already the breadwinner in the family, had hit the roof. But equally there had been no way that Ewart Hawkins was going to let the emaciated mare go back to the people he had rescued her from. And since he had threatened—and had meant it—to have them prosecuted if they tried to get her back, her owners had moved on without her.

‘Please, Mummy,’ Phinn remembered pleading, and her mother had looked into her pleading blue eyes, so like her own, and had drawn a long sigh.

‘You’ll have to feed and water her, and clean up after her,’ she had said severely. ‘Daily!’

And Ewart, the battle over, had given his wife a delighted kiss, and Phinn had exchanged happy grins with her father.

She had been ten years old then, and life had been wonderful. She had been born on the farm to the best parents in the world. Her childhood, given the occasional volcanic explosions from her mother when Ewart had been particularly outrageous about something, had been little short of idyllic. Any major rows between her parents, she’d later realised had, in the main, been kept from her.

Her father had adored her from the word go. Because of some sort of complication at her birth, her mother had had to stay in bed, and it had been left to Ewart to look after the newborn. They had lived in one of the farm cottages then, only moving to the big farmhouse when Grandfather and then Grandmother Hawkins had died. Phinn’s father had bonded with his baby daughter immediately, and, entirely uninterested in farming, he had spent hour after hour with his little girl. It had been he who, advised by his wife, Hester, that the child had to be registered with the authorities within forty-two days of her birth, had gone along to the register office with strict instructions to name her Elizabeth Maud—Maud after Hester’s mother.

He had never liked his mother-in-law, and had returned home to have to explain himself to his wife.

‘You’ve called her— what ?’ Hester had apparently hit a C above top C.

‘Calm down, my love,’ he had attempted to soothe, and had gone on to explain that with a plain name like Hawkins, he had thought the baby had better have a pretty name to go in front.

‘Delphinium!’

‘I’m not having my beautiful daughter called plain Lizzie Hawkins,’ he’d answered, further explaining, ‘To be a bit different I’ve named her Delphinnium, with an extra “n” in the middle.’ And, to charm his still not mollified wife, ‘I’m rather hoping little Phinn will have your gorgeous delphinium-blue eyes. Did you know,’ he went on, ‘that your beautiful eyes go all dark purple, like the Black Knight delphinium, when you’re all emotional?’

‘Ewart Hawkins,’ she had threatened, refusing to be charmed.

‘And I brought you a cabbage,’ he’d said winningly.

The fact that he had brought it, not bought it, had told her that he had nipped over some farmer’s hedge and helped himself.

‘Ewart Hawkins!’ she’d said again, but he had the smile he had wanted.

Hester Rainsworth, as she had been prior to her marriage, had been brought up most conventionally in a workaholic family. Impractical dreamer, talented pianist, sometime poet and would-be mechanical engineer Ewart Hawkins could not have been more of an opposite. They had fallen in love—and for some years had been blissfully happy.

Given a few ups and downs, it had been happiness all round in Phinn’s childhood. Grandfather Hawkins had been the tenant of the farm, and on his death the tenancy had passed to her father. The farm had then been her father’s responsibility, but after one year of appalling freak weather, when they had spent more than they had earned, Hester had declared that, with money tight, Ewart could be farmer and house-husband too, while she went out and found a job and brought some money in.